


shadows of the dawn

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Canonical Character Death, Canonical Character Resurrection, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: He’d died. He’d died and maybe he’d come back too, but she can’t help but think that it is a close thing. That he might not have. That he might not understand how much he means to them, to her. Maybe it’s time she said something about it.





	shadows of the dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Set during episode 69. Intimations of future Pike/Percy/Vex. Fun fact! This is my 50th Critical Role fic on AO3.

****Routine wakes her. Months of rising early to work on the temple, years of rising early in prayer, a lifetime of rising early to prepare for the day. A healer’s work is never done, and hers begins anew with the grey light of dawn.

The hangover is not usually a part of that routine, and it’s a  _bitch_.

She drags herself towards consciousness, regret chasing her the whole way. Her tongue sits heavy and musty in her mouth and there’s a throbbing behind her closed eyes that makes her very much want to roll back over and sleep until she feels human again. Gnomish. Whichever.

But they have work to do, she has work to do, so instead she sits upright in the wide expanse of the bed, itself an island unmoored within the expanse of the room Cassandra has deemed hers for the time being. Whitestone is an impressive feat of architecture, that she cannot deny. But at times like this, in the pockets of privacy before she must don her armor and face the day, she misses the clutter coziness of Westruun. Of home.

Like most thoughts she has in these in-between moments, it is no help to her now. She leans forward and rubs her palms into her eyes and spins a thread of magic to cast a simple restoration on herself. Perhaps that is cheating, but being cleric to a divine being of hope and healing must be good for something.

Even if that something is instantaneous hangover cures.

When she feels a little more alive and a little less like she has been run over by a cart––and after she has made a mental note to find out what exactly Grog brought back from Ank’harel, because wow––she rises to greet the day. Her morning prayers fall from her lips by rote as she kneels before the small shrine she has set up in the corner of the room. Outside her window the sky turns from grey to peach to a rosy gold. It will be a clear day, then, if cold. The stone is chill through the thin fabric of her breeches, and she ignores the ache with practiced ease. She stretches then, and dresses, and slips from her room into the cool, still-silent hallway of the castle.

This is when she leaves for the temple, usually, by way of the kitchens to bring breakfast to those who work with her to shape heavy stone into weightless arches, somewhere worthy of Sarenrae’s worship. Usually, though, her family is not here.

Usually one of them has not just died.

She has done an admirable job of thinking around it, between the trembling relief and Grog’s new alcohol, but there is no avoiding it now. The memory sits sick-sour in her gut, and even knowing they succeeded––even knowing he listened, even knowing he is back––does not scrub away the what-if fear that he might not have. That they could have failed. That she could have failed, and left Percy cold and dead and pale as the stone city.

She paces the halls aimlessly and is still unsurprised when her feet bring her to his door.

Alright. Perhaps it not so aimless.

She hesitates a long moment, but her mind was made up when she arrived. Before she arrived; it was made up the moment she left the room and turned for the eastern wing rather than follow her nose and stomach towards the kitchen. The rest of her has only taken a little longer to catch on.

The door creaks only a little as she pushes it open, a momentary protest before it swings the rest of the way silently. The pink light of the dawn bleeds through the windows, curtains thrown open, softening the hard lines of the room. Percy lies face down across the bed, still clad in coat and boots and everything else, snoring quietly. Pike’s heart swells.

She leaves the door slightly cracked behind her, closes it far as she can before it creaks again, and pads across the room to hover by the bed a moment. His face is pressed up into the bedspread, the one eye she can see screwed shut. He clutches his cracked glasses in one hand that dangles over the side of the bed; the other stretches towards the far corner, fingertips brushing the pillows. She looks him over, and then the room too. Bits of unfinished projects sit scattered across pages of parchment which themselves lie scattered across his desk. One of his dresser drawers is still open, as though he packed in a hurry last time he left. There are books on the shelves, and a few stacked on the low table next to his bed. A tapestry hangs against one wall, the scene unfamiliar. She thinks perhaps it is meant to be Whitestone; there is a castle upon a mountainside, and a valley colored like a quilt all in squares of green. Candles melted in their holders sit in slightly tarnished wall sconces around the room, and she sees now how Whitestone can be all pale stone and ghosts and bones and still inviting, still home.

And here is Percy, come back to it all.

Her heart thrums, each beat a question.  _What-if_ , _what-if_ ,  _what-if_.

She itches for action, to occupy her hands and mind with something besides such useless, pounding fears. She unlaces his boots, first one then the other. He does not move.

“Sleep of the dead,” she murmurs, and it is a horrible thought. She giggles.

When that is done and they are set neatly near the door she sits against the side of the bed, next to his dangling arm, and watches the light shift across the far wall. She breathes for a few minutes, listens to the huff of his snoring, the rustle of the bedsheets as he shifts now and then. She takes his glasses gently, and he hums a momentary protest before he gives them up.

There’s a neat crack through the left lens, and the wire around it is bent out of shape. He must have fallen. Fallen, and she hadn’t been there to help him up again. She swallows.

“I was afraid,” she murmurs into the dawn-soft room, staring at the crooked reflection of herself in his glasses, “you wouldn’t come back.”

He snores.

“And it would have been my fault,” she continues. “I did what I could, but I’m not–– It wouldn’t have been enough, you know? Even if it was, I was afraid that––”

That he would choose not to. That they––she––wouldn’t be enough.

She sighs and turns his glasses over in her hands. “I meant to tell you,” she says quietly. She laughs a little then, breathless, and adds, “Vex beat me to it I guess. That’s alright.”

She’s not stupid. She knows a plea like that––a connection like that––speaks louder than a strangled prayer in a moment of panic. Her face falls for a moment, and it is a struggle to find peace again, or the facsimile of it anyways. The lump in her throat is heavy, and makes it hard to speak.

“You are loved, you know.” He has to know. “You are. By… by Vex. And by Keyleth. And Vax. And Grog, of course, and Scanlan too even if he’s funny about saying it. And–– and by me.” It’s hard to work it around the lump in her throat, but it feels better to say it. Lighter. “I love you.”

It is nothing so poetic as Vex’s declaration, nor as moving. Just a little truth, spoken to a pair of broken glasses. She sighs and folds her hands around them, ducks her head low and murmurs a prayer-quiet spell. Gold light shines through her fingers, gentle as the morning sun, and when she parts her fingers and straightens again the glasses are mended, perfectly whole.

The glasses are whole, and Percy is whole, and that’s enough. It must be enough, if only just.

She stands up and stares at him, face down in bed.

“Thank you for coming back. I’m not sure what we would do without you.”

She kisses the top of his head once, very soft, and leaves the glasses on the bedspread next to him, and turns toward the door.

Behind her, Percy says, “I’m sure you would manage.”

Pike freezes with a wince. “How much of that did you hear?”

“It would never have been your fault.”

She sighs, a slump of her shoulders, and turns around.

He’s sat up on the bed now, legs hanging over the edge, in the process of sliding his glasses back on his face. His hair sticks up slightly on one side where he’s slept on it. He looks at her, wry amusement writ across his face, and something else besides she cannot read. He tries for a smile, a quirk of his lips. Pike returns it, equally awkward and equally honest.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he offers. Pike shrugs a little.

“I’m not sure it’s a very good idea.”

“Terrible ideas happen to be a specialty of mine.”

“They’re really not,” she returns, disapproval humming underneath, and he pats the bed next to him.

She can hardly make it any worse, she decides, so she sits. For a moment, neither of them talk.

“It’s really okay, Percy,” she tells him, gently as she can. “You don’t owe any of us anything. I just wanted to, y’know. Make sure you knew.”

“What you see in me I’ll never understand,” he returns, looking truly baffled. Pike peers up at him, brow furrowed.

“Percy.”

“Truly, Pike, I’ve hardly made the best decisions. I can’t help but to would imagine things would be better if I––”

“Things are better when you’re here,” she interrupts, firm and frowning. His mouth snaps shut. “We love you, Percy. Outside of any, you know.” She waves a hand. “Feelings.”

He stares at her a moment, then repeats, deadpan, “You love me outside of feelings.”

She looks at him, and he at her, and of the two of them she breaks into laughter first. He follows, reticent almost, and then warm and low. It is a good sound to hear, after worrying she never would again.

“You know what I mean,” she says, and he sobers up.

“I have no clue what I did to deserve any of it.”

“You don’t have to do anything to deserve love,” she tells him. “That’s why it’s love. It doesn’t have anything to do with deserving. It just comes from, from being you. And being us.”

He takes his glasses off as she speaks, rubbing them on his still-dusty clothes in a futile attempt to clean them. She could almost swear he’s blushing.

She places a hand on his knee and he lowers his hands into his lap and looks at her.

“You really are very intimidating,” he says mildly. She laughs, and then quiets as he wraps an arm around her. A moment later she feels his lips against the top of her head, and the rough stubble of his jaw catches against a few stray hairs. She breathes out shakily.

“Percy,” she says gently, and he hums. “I… did you hear? Any of our, you know. What we said.” What Vex said.

“I did,” he says quietly. Pike breathes out a sigh. It only catches in her chest a little.

“Okay.”

“Pike.”

“Yes?”

“It strikes me that you can love more than one person quite a great deal.”

She twists to look up at him, and finds him staring at her, brow a little furrowed, expression a little uncertain. Pike finds the hand wrapped around her shoulders and squeezes it.

“See,” she says, and maybe it’s a little watery but he doesn’t mention it. “I don’t think your ideas are so terrible at all.”

That startles a laugh from him, and she feels the vibrations shake through him where she’s tucked against his side. As he quiets again his stomach rumbles, doubly loud. Pike grins.

“Breakfast time.”

“I do feel like I could eat a horse. Though, that seems a little unfair for the horse.”

“Maybe some bacon instead,” Pike suggests. “Or chicken.”

“Please no,” he returns, arm unwinding from Pike’s side. “I’ve had enough for a lifetime.”

She slides off the bed with a smile, and turns back to Percy, and realizes he’s still in the clothes he–– arrived in.

“Maybe you want to change.”

“Mmm. And bathe. Much as I’d enjoy the company.”

“Oh, maybe not,” she says, and he laughs. With him sitting they are nearly the same height. She puts a hand on his cheek, and he freezes suddenly.

“Thank you for coming back,” she tells him. His eyes flutter closed a moment as he turns his face into her touch, and then he meets her gaze again.

“Thank you for bringing me back,” he murmurs. “I don’t relish doing that again.”

“We’ll make sure you don’t,” she replies, and seals her promise with the softest kiss, just at the corner of his mouth.

And then, while he is still gaping at her, she turns on her heel and near bolts out of the room.

“See you at breakfast,” she calls over her shoulder, and the door creaks shut behind her.

Down in the kitchen, she is nearly through her meal––and Scanlan’s retelling of some hijink she missed, embellished she’s sure––when Percy appears in the doorway, clean and dressed in fresh clothes, and the low hum of tension lacing the room evaporates the moment he arrives. He meets Vex’s eyes a moment and then flicks his gaze on to Pike, and the smallest of smiles graces his lips.

She returns it, and moves over so Keyleth can make room for him, and it is nothing like her routine, but that does not matter because it is good, it is better than anything, to have her family back.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [teammompike](http://teammompike.tumblr.com/)


End file.
